Autodesk’s 3D Studio Max 9 is an advanced 3D modeling and animation program designed to ease the animation process through its primary rigging features. Once you’ve connected the model to the rig, you can move the model smoothly simply by moving the rig as desired. With proper application of the rigging modes supplied with 3D Studio Max 9, you can control the movement of a model precisely, with each rigged section moving naturally along a jointed location.
Rigging Systems
- Rigging a model is like placing a skeleton beneath the model’s skin, or like clay over a wire aperture. With the model attached to the rig, every time you move a rigged section, the model skin over the rig moves as well. The skin over the joints of the rigs deforms and reforms according to the severity of the rig, acting much like skin would over a bone. The movement of the model can be limited by the rig’s joints, as it would with a real skeleton. Movement points only occur at jointed areas, keeping your model’s movement consistent throughout the animation.
Biped Rigging
- Biped rigging uses a two-legged skeleton as the basis for model movement. To set the rigging, you place the skeleton within the model and then link model parts to the bones of the skeleton. After linkage, you move the bones as an actual skeleton would move. One of the greatest benefits of biped rigging is the large number of scripts available for application to the rig to control commonly animated movements such as walking or jumping. With the use of the scripts, you can save time, since you don't have to model the common movements manually frame-by-frame.
Rigging with Bones
- Rigging with bones requires the same basic rigging process as rigging with a biped, except each bone must be created and placed individually in the model. Bones are useful for any model that has complicated joints but is not a biped in structure. The length of the bones are variable for use with models of any size. As you would with the biped, you’ll need to link sections of the model to the bones in order to control that model section with the rig.
Animation Using Rigged Models
- Once you have the model rigged, animation is greatly simplified. Rather than moving each section of the model you only have to move the bones. To move an arm, instead of handling movement for each modeled finger, the wrist and the forearm individually at each animation frame, simply move the forearm bone at the joint. The rest of the arm will follow the forearm movement as long as the bones in the lower arm sections are rigged to the end of the forearm bone that you've moved. You can animate using rigging in a frame-by-frame process. Or, you can use key frames to assign the rig’s position in the starting frame and ending frame, allowing 3D Studio Max to perform the movement between the two frames for you.
